Dear Brethren: - I have long anticipated with
pleasurable expectation the session, which you are now holding. I have allowed
myself to hope that the profitable spiritual reunion, which occurred at our
meeting in Columbus last year would be renewed in the one now going forward,
and that I would be permitted to take part in it. It seems, however, that my
expectations are not to be realized. Prison-duress restrains me and I cannot,
in person, be with you.

But my heart is free and it goes towards you. It asserts its liberty in
these lines, which I venture to believe, will not be refused a hearing by you.

Assuming that what I write
will be most welcome to you it it enter somewhat largely into matters of a personal nature, I shall allow myself to speak first of thing
relating to the condition and prospects of the imprisoned company of which I am
a member. These items will perhaps furnish me with a text for discourse upon
sundry things relating to the advancement of the cause of God and humanity,
which have been illustrated to my own mind by my experience here.

We came here, by order of
Court, nine weeks ago this afternoon. We have thus far seen, although we have
carefully and constantly looked for one, no opportunity for an honorable escape from imprisonment. We might have been
discharged on bail, but, owing to circumstances, which I need not now narrate,
it has seemed to us that the giving of bail would be a virtual acknowledgment
on our part of wrong-doing of which we know that we have not bee guilty. And
while, observing that caution which we have felt to be due from us, we have
sometimes been in doubt whether our view of duty as indeed the right one, the
case has been uniformly settled by some Providential sign which has manifestly
indicated to us the propriety of maintaining our position. Were I speaking to
you by word of mouth I would recite to you the history of these teachings from
our Great Master (as we have regarded them), and should I do so, I am confident
you would agree with me in thinking that God has plainly said to us, “This is
the way, walk ye in it.” How long we are to walk in “strait places,” or when
or how we are to be delivered I do not know. When the hour appointed by our
Divine Father for our relief comes, we shall be free. Till then, imprisonment
will be better to us than liberty.

Confinement has been trying
to all of us. We are, without exception, person of active, stirring habits,
and restraint is not pleasant to us. But we have occasion for thankfulness in
the fact that we have all been kept in good health. Nor must I forget to
acknowledge that Divine Love has sheltered our families. Our wives and
children, the latter numbering nearly forty, have all been protected from
sickness and other peril.

But confinement has not
been our only trouble. It is perhaps seldom that a company of men is called to
encounter such a succession of trials in the way of exhausting suspense,
agonizing excitements, latter disappointments and, that worst of griefs,
darkness as to action to be taken, as we have passed through. Our nine weeks
of prison-life have been drawn out into months, if not years, of ordinary
existence. And, withal, we have been detached from many of those helps which
ordinarily qualify the trials of life. We have been compelled to “cease from
man,” and this has not a little increased nor troubles. I must not allow
myself to speak as if our difficulties and afflictions have been great when
compared with those, which our Redeemer suffered in our behalf, nor with those
which numberless good men have encountered in prisons, nor yet with those which
our brethren who are bound in the chains of Southern slavery daily experience.
But I may say that the cup we have been drinking, of lat, is such a n one, for
bitterness, as we have seldom or never drunk before.

Yet blessing has come to us
with bitterness. The officers who have had us in custody have been more than
kind to us. Friends have gathered around to cheer us. Consoling letters have
come to us from every part of the country. A great cloud of prayer has gone to
Heaven in our behalf. The spirit of prayer and confiding lobe has been made to
rest upon us. It has been seldom in our whole lives that religious worship,
whether public, or private has been so profitable to us as it has been here. I
would love to tell you how sweetly God has let Himself down among us as, at the
close of days of harrowing anxiety and weighty disappointment, we have opened
the Bible to find our usual evening lesson. Often has the word of grace been
read amid a breathless silence, which has proved that every soul was making new
discoveries of the riches of Revelation. Truly, the Lord has been good to us
and His mercies have, I trust, been recognized by us. If the coercion intended by those who put us here ha failed of its
purpose, the discipline intended
by our Heavenly Father has not been lost upon us. I cannot but hope that, upon
our release, we shall to our work truer and better men than we have ever before
been.

Resting here the narration
of personal matters I wish I could ext exhibit to you at length some of the
great facts and truths relating to God’s plan in renovating the world which
have been made conspicuous to my mind during my stay here. But I can speak of
but few of them and of those but briefly.

First of all, that
important doctrine taught by our blessed Lord and well illustrated in his life,
“except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if
it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,” has been emphasized to my mind. That
there can be no efficiency in any good work except as there is a self-sacrificing
spirit and that usefulness will be measured by willingness to submit to any
inconvenience and expense – this thought has, of late, at once rebuked
the uprisings of the discontent of which I have sometimes been conscious and
pointed to results which have mad the future more than bring with promise. Do
we, brethren, sufficiently calculate upon trial as a necessary condition of success? Do we go to our labor counting,
as we should, on troubles and griefs? Do we oppose sin, do we denounce wicked
human enactments as solemnly conscious as we should be that our protest can be
of no use if it does not proceed from a heart which will flinch from no
afflictions which it may meet in the discharge of duty? Would not slavery,
with its dread offspring the Fugitive Slave Act, soon be brought to an end if
all of us assailed, it with a resolution, which would cheerfully surrender
ease, social position and even life itself, were the sacrifice necessary to
conquest?

Again, the meaning of that
passage of the Scriptures, “judgment must first begin at the house of God” and
its applicability to our Lord’s method upon earth has come freshly before me
since I have been here. That the redemption of the world from sorrow is to be
accomplished through sorrow and that this redemption is to be speedy and
complete, according as the burden of grief is taken up by the children of God’
that, for instance, the release of millions from slavery will make haste when
Christians so adjust themselves to the work of relief as that what shall seem
to be judgment will begin with them, all this now seems to me, as it never did
before, to be true. Is it not true, brethren? Will not the heavy yoke be
lifted from galled necks when, and will not the burden be lightened as, we and
all others who love our Lord take an actual burden upon ourselves?

And it is clear to my own
mind that a time for anew taking up of burdens by us had come. We must toil
and endure as we have never done before, or Liberty and Religion in our land
will disappear before Slavery and Brute Force. Have we not a call from Heaven
to make new endeavors lest the Dred Scott decision should make Slavery
co-extensive with our national domain? But I must pause, I pray God to be with
and bless you in deliberations, and to quicken your zeal for the truth of
thousand fold. I venture to believe you will remember us in your prayers.
Fraternally yours, H.E.
Peck.